Why Your Projects Are Worthless for Landing a Job in 2025

After facing all that layoff news, we're all here trying to make space for ourselves in the so-called tech industry.

For millennials and Gen Z, the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) and layoffs are hitting them more than their FOMO.

Furthermore, everyone came to realise that no job is secure, and AI is on its way to replace most of them. But will it really replace everything?

The Layoff Reality

The big tech giants, including Meta, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and now Oracle, as well as every IT company, have joined the trend of getting people out of their companies. And AI is the catalyst for all this restructuring (as they are all saying).

But is that AI thing really taking away jobs? Absolutely not, according to Crunchbase reports, the real reason behind the layoffs is post-pandemic overhiring.

According to reports, Meta's employee count doubled from 48,268 in March 2020 to over 80,000 by September 2022, and Amazon added 743,000 employees between 2019 and early 2023, bringing the total to 1.54 million workers.

Since we have returned to the normal phase, there's no need for so many employees, and yes, AI also makes a contribution.

On top of that, according to a survey of NMN, junior developers or freshers can't actually code! Yeah! That's the truth, AI is not only performing the most manageable programming tasks now, but also making the new generation of coders weaker and more dependent on it.

What could be worse than this?

Let's not get off the track and jump to our main topic.

So? Why are your projects worthless? (Sorry for being harsh!)

Cookie-cutter work
No real impact
Missing depth
Quantity over Quality

That's it? Let's point out!

1. Cookie-cutter work

We are living in 2025, where everyone has high-speed internet. Recruiters have been seeing all these calculator apps, Netflix clones, and Chat apps that have made no real impact over the decades.

But why does everyone have the same projects? Yes! Those same tech influencers are advising their audiences the same way to get a job or internship.

That's why every fresher is now working on these projects, which are easily available or open-source.

And Many of them are simply copying and pasting them.

What do you think? Is increased availability leading to less creativity?

2. No real impact

What real impact can all these shady projects create? Almost nothing! The same calculator app isn't giving you different values, the same Netflix clone is not that creative, and the same chat app is not what we need now.

Indeed, what we need is a real solution that everyone is facing, and you're solving it by merely justifying the problem statement. For that, you don't need to understand rocket science.

Even solving a small problem effectively with a better development stack can impress recruiters and help you secure a chance to enter the corporate world.

Remember, the project that solves no problem adds no value. A great software engineer always focuses on solving problems that matter.

3. Missing depth

We already know the current competition in the tech market, and these shallow projects only help you to cover the basics (if you really don't copy them) instead of demonstrating your problem-solving skills.

But what we are currently missing in the projects is depth.

What's the depth in the projects?

Let's take a comparison between a shallow and a strong project -

Shallow Project: Suppose you build a weather forecast app (simple though) that fetches data from a single, reliable API. It only shows your basic proficiency with APIs.
Deep Project: A weather app that can effectively handle the API failures by using a fallback mechanism, possibly using a secondary API or a local cache.

That's it? That is not even a strong real-world project! It might not, but it shows your ability to handle complexity and real-world failures.

The above comparison shows how even a simple change in a project can add value to it. Furthermore, it is up to you to present it effectively in your portfolio or resume.

4. Quantity over Quality

I also believe the more we build, the more we learn. But really?

However, we learn more when we experience something new that we have never faced before.

The same applies to learning while building a project; if we follow the same tutorial to build the project that has been existing for years without any changes or updates, do we really learn something?

I don't think so, because when I started programming, I was one of those who got excited by watching tutorials and building projects out of them. But what it really gave me was only self-satisfaction that didn't last long.

At this point, instead of focusing on how many projects you build, focus on what new things you have made, what you learn out of it, and what changes it can make in the real world.

Recruiters don't need tons of projects in your resume; they just need what you did differently that your competitor didn't.

Conclusion

In the end, I will say that the area of focus should be the quality of the project, innovation, and real-world impact. Whether you're starting now, have already started, or are on a master's level, getting your first job is tough but not impossible.

What recruiters actually focus on is not how many projects you build, but what you did differently that no one else did by showing your critical thinking and problem-solving ability.